Application of the UKCP09 WG Outputs to Assess Performance of Combined Sewers System in a Changing Climate

Abstract

In many parts of the world, old sewer systems have been designed without consideration for change in climate, so probabilities and risks of sewer surcharge and flooding are elevated due to increase in extreme rainfall events as a consequence of global warming. The current paper is aiming to assess how the climate change on interannual to multidecadal timescale (2020s; 2050s; 2080s) will affect design standards of wastewater networks due to the presumed increase in rainfall intensity and frequency in the Northwest of England area (selected site). Design storms have been analyzed for future rainfall obtained from the UK Climate Projection version 2009 (UKCP09) weather generator (WG), which was applied to the existing urban drainage system to check the level of service in winter and summer seasons. Two emission scenarios (SRES) have been adopted to simulate the greenhouse gas concentration; high scenario (A1FI) and low scenario (B1). Results indicate that the impact of increase in the design storm of the system in winter led to a potential of increase flood volume from manholes and intern basements at risk of flooding with the worst condition associated with 24 h storm in 2080s. Moreover, when this design storm depth increased by only 15%, the corresponding flood volume increase by 40%, this indicates that the relation between the cause of flooding and its consequences is nonlinear. Summer season has an opposite picture, and flood volume is projected to decrease with the increase in the storm duration causing low risk. Considering climate change in this study caused most of urban drainage models runs to be very slow with some interruption in the simulation due to the inflation in some parameters, so caution should be taken.